By News Room
Federal agencies responsible for US national security are reviewing procedures for sharing classified information between agencies. This was reported in an interview with Reuters by three US government sources.
According to one of them, the Pentagon, using the current situation, has decided to follow the distribution of intelligence within departments and ensure that people who do not need this information do not get there. access in the future.
The intelligence community has looked into the matter from time to time in the past, the source told Reuters, but the leaks have drawn scrutiny from the mailing list. The Pentagon continues to study procedures for distributing national security equipment, the Reuters source added.
In addition, an investigation has been launched to find a person or group of people who may have been motivated to release intelligence documents, one of the sources told Reuters.
The Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into the leak and illegal publication of classified Pentagon documents.
Some of the documents, a Reuters source said, could be in the possession of thousands of people with government security clearances, including those relating to interests in other countries. And the number of people who had access to the documents underscores that sensitive information can be sent to an inordinate number of government employees. “The Pentagon needs to limit unrestricted access to some of the most sensitive intelligence to officials who don’t need it,” the source told Reuters.
At the same time, two other Reuters interlocutors drew attention to the fact that although the very fact of the leaks is concerning, many of the documents “filtered” on the social network are Pentagon reports on the situation in Ukraine. in February and March, and apparently do not disclose details of future operations. Reuters interlocutors also said the current leak was nowhere near the size of Wikileaks, when 700,000 diplomatic documents, videos and cables were posted online.
On Monday, Pentagon spokesman Chris Meagher told reporters that the Department of Defense “has taken steps to take a closer look at how (classified) information is shared and with whom.”
According to Meagher, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was briefed on the leaks on April 6, and beginning April 7, the Pentagon chief began meeting with department leadership daily to discuss the issue.
White House spokesman John Kirby told a Monday news conference that President Joe Biden was made aware of the leak last week. “We don’t know who is responsible for this. And we don’t know if they have any other documents that they intend to release… Does that worry us? Absolutely,” Kirby said.
The internet posting of classified documents from the Pentagon and other federal agencies is the most serious national security leak since 2013, when former NSA officer Edward Snowden, who fled the United States, revealed the secret program of the National Security Agency (NSA).
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Source: US intelligence community reviews procedure for sharing classified information
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